Saturday, October 6, 2012

Tintype of Tintype Collector

Yes, the collector had a tintype of herself made yesterday. (More fun and less narcissistic than getting one's DNA through the mail? Who can tell.) Given the brutal honesty of the tintype plate it's actually hard to be too vain. Through some strange alchemy of tin and chemical solution, the image shows freckles---everywhere--that were last seen when I was six years old.

As close as it gets to seeing oneself dead. Especially given 19th-century 'old weird America' look the process gives one. She died in an asylum in 1911.